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Curry of Pork

A pork curry with apples served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,433 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Curry of Pork

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the pork into 2-inch square pieces.

  2. Brown the pork in butter with half an onion.

  3. Stir in flour and let it brown.

Make the curry

  1. Add sliced apples to the pork.

  2. Cover the pork with boiling water and any cold gravy.

  3. Season with salt.

  4. Simmer for one hour.

  5. Stir in curry powder and cover.

  6. Finish cooking.

Serve

  1. Boil the rice as directed in the recipe for Mulligatawny Soup.

  2. Serve the curry over the rice arranged in a rampart shape.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Pork + ricetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Apple + ricetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,311 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pork
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long, slow simmering.
Butter
Fat that carries heat for browning the pork and adds rich flavor.
Flour
Browns in the fat and thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness as it browns, building the base flavor of the curry.
Apples
Soften into the sauce, adding sweetness and a mild acidity that balances the spice.
Curry powder
Releases its aromatic spices into the hot fat and liquid, giving the dish its characteristic aroma.

The step that matters

Let the flour brown. Cooking flour in the hot butter until it turns golden removes its raw, pasty taste and deepens the gravy's color and flavor. Stopping too early leaves a floury taste, while too much heat can scorch it and make the sauce bitter.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, butter, onion, flour, rice):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, butter, onion, flour, rice. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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